15. Sydney
CHAPTER 15
SYDNEY
West hasn’t said a single word in ten minutes. Not since he shoved me in this ridiculous floatation device. Good grief, I’m like a beacon of orange out here. It’s not like I would actually fall overboard. I don’t want that close of a look at the jellyfish.
But my bad mood doesn’t get to stay. The sun is out, this is my first time on a sailboat, and I escaped a murderer. Life is definitely going my way.
He still hasn’t let me explain about the money or what I was originally here to hire him for.
“Make sure we don’t hit a rock,” he tells me before he disappears into the cabin.
“Hit a rock? Do people do that?” Sheesh.
I stand up and look out the front. Do rocks just randomly pop up in the ocean? How closely do I need to watch this? I climb on the bench and rest my hand on the beam that the sail is tied down to. I’m sure it has a name, but I don’t know what that is.
We crest a wave, and I have to hold my arms out for balance.
“What the hell are you doing?” West asks as he walks up the stairs.
“Watching for rocks.” Another wave hits, and this time, when I try to catch myself, I stumble forward off the bench, landing on my ass on the deck.
West grunts and walks over to grab the front of my life jacket, pulling me to my feet easily. “I was joking.”
“About the rocks?”
He sighs and looks down at me. “Yes, about the rocks. We’re not going to hit a rock. I charted the course.”
“Usually, when you tell a joke, someone should be laughing at the end of it.”
West doesn’t smile, but he does look amused. “I didn’t think you’d take me seriously.”
I can’t help but smile at the softened expression on his face. He seems less intense and more approachable right now. Apparently, all I have to do is take a fall on my rump every time I need to cheer him up.
“Here.” West shoves a granola bar in my hand.
I look at the bar, then back at him.
He shrugs. “You did lots of sprinting today. Figured you needed something before a strong wind threw you overboard.”
I grasp the corner of the package and notice that my hands really are shaking. Have I been shaking this whole time?
I look up to see if West notices, but he’s busy examining the mast.
“I’m going to reef the sail. You should sit down again.”
“Do you always boss people around?”
“Yes,” he says, and he sets about his work. I sit down because I would rather not fall down, and this granola bar actually smells good.
I eat it in two giant bites. West glances over at me with wide eyes. “There’s more in the cabin.”
I nod and make my way there. Sitting on the table in the cabin is a large package of bars. I grab a handful and bring them up top.
West is busy lowering the sail and running ropes around different parts of it. I know absolutely nothing about sailing, and he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who wants to give me a quick lesson.
When he’s finished, he sits behind the wheel and pulls on a ball cap. The sun is shining, and I’m beginning to see why people are in love with the Oregon coast. A clear day like today out on the ocean means a spectacular view of the coastline.
“Here you go.” I hold out some of the bars to him. He takes two, leaving three in my hand. I shrug and go back to my seat on the bench, sitting down and making short work of those bars.
I’m starved. I feel like I could eat fifty of these.
“How did you witness the murder of a random person by the Italian mafia?”
Aha, so we’re going to get right into it, then. No learning each other’s favorite color first.
“You know what I find interesting is that you knew who they were, but you still helped me. Not exactly the actions of someone who doesn’t want to be involved.”
“Stop cross-examining me.”
I rip open a granola bar and take a bite. They’re dry as dust, but I’m still hungry. “Do you think I would make a good prosecutor?”
He pushes his hat back on his head a little. “Do you want to be a prosecutor?”
I grin. “No.”
He crumples up the wrappers and puts them in his jeans pocket. “Then you don’t need an answer to that question.”
“But I like it when people tell me I can be anything I want.”
He raises one eyebrow at me as he asks, “Do you like it when people lie to you?”
I crinkle all my wrappers into a ball. “Yes, it gives me a false sense of security, which I love.”
He shakes his head and looks up at the sky. “What did I do to deserve you?”
I chuckle at that. “Probably something terrible.”
He shakes his head and stares out at the horizon. “You’re not wrong about that.”
I have to fight every curious fiber of my being not to pry into that statement. Instead, I redirect the conversation. “Why did you decide to help me?”
“Well, I’ve never been a fan of a bully.” He clears his throat and moves to the mast to check the perfectly secure line. He’s uncomfortable with these questions—almost like he doesn’t want to know the answers even though he’s the one asking the questions.
“And murderers are bullies?”
He looks at me with another quirk of his brow. “Wouldn’t you say so?”
I nod as I think about it. “Good point.”
“And it’s not like you gave me all the choice in the world. Where’d you learn to cling on like that?”
“I didn’t like getting left behind as a kid. So I learned the art of being an absolute menace.” Being an overprotected only girl and the smallest of all my brothers and cousins meant I had to learn the art of clinging at a young age. Eventually, they would give up and let me go with them. “But you’re obviously physically capable of leaving me behind. So, why did you bring me?”
“I didn’t want you to die.” He clears his throat and readjusts his hat.
“Aha!” I point at him. “I knew it!”
He freezes, an uncomfortable look in his eye.
“You are a good guy.”
He relaxes and folds his arms across his chest. “I am many things, but a good guy is not one of those things.”
I give him a knowing look. He just hid me from murderers. He at least has a hidden good streak.
He shakes his head as if he’s silently arguing with me.
“You need to tell me everything you remember about the murder scene.”
“I thought you were retired,” I muse.
“You might come up with something that would help Fletcher put them behind bars.”
“Everything?” I hide the catch in my voice with a smile.
“Everything,” he says again. It’s ominous.
“Do you think I lied about it?” I have to ask. I need to know what he thinks about me and what his motives are for helping me if he’s ‘not a good guy.’
He frowns at that. “No, no, I don’t think you’re lying. Fletcher saw the security cam footage anyway.”
I shrug. It’d be nicer if he took me at my word, but I am a complete stranger to him. I can’t exactly blame him.
“What were you going to hire me to do in the first place? Aren’t you a translator? At least that’s what Bodie said.” He looks at me as he folds his arms across his chest.
“I wasn’t kidding about the money.” He completely ignored me after I threw out the thirty million number. He wouldn’t even look in my direction for the next hour.
“And what does that have to do with me?” West asks.
“Bodie told me you are really good at getting information from technology. Is that true?” I mimic his posture and try to fold my arms across my chest. It doesn’t go well. Trying to fold your arms over a giant life vest is just comical. Not really the tough-guy pose I was going for.
West raises an eyebrow at me as I fight with myself, the life jacket bumping my chin every time I move my arms.
“You’ve got problems.”
“And you’re one of them,” I mutter back as I adjust the life jacket.
“So you wanted me to open that flash drive you have?”
I nod. “I’ll gladly pay you! When we get back to land that is. You said we’re not going back to Newport?”
He nods. “It’s too risky to go back for now. I think they might suspect you were on this boat. Why else would they talk to me twice? I’ll drop you off in Florence. We’ll arrange it with Fletcher to get you a ride. They’ve seen you head to the docks twice now. You can bet your ass they’re going to have someone there watching things for any sign of you.”
“How far is Florence? Are we sailing all the way to Italy?”
That earns me something that sounds like a grim chuckle, but he doesn’t smile. “No, it’s a town on the Oregon coast. Next port after Waldport.”
I struggle to pull my phone from my pocket and then attempt to look up my maps. I have one bar, and it keeps disappearing. Another thing I never thought of. There aren’t a lot of cell towers out in the middle of the ocean.
My mom thinks I’m on a trip with some girlfriends in Puget Sound. My brothers think I’m on a solo trip to the Oregon coast for some rest and recovery from another round of sickness. A long round of mono in high school and then again in college has my family thinking I’m an especially frail soul. They promised to keep it a secret from Mom as long as I checked in regularly with them.
I snap a picture of the sail. I’ll send them a picture when I get service again and convince them I took a charter out. It’s not too far from the truth.
“I can’t wait to get to port again and text this to my brother Brooks. He’ll think it’s fantastic on a sailboat,” I explain as I shove my phone back in my pocket.
“If we can get into the flash drive, we can find the thirty million.”
“And do what with it? Return it to the police? Because you have to know it’s stolen money.”
I smile at that. “Now that’s where it gets good. I think with a good lawyer, we would be able to keep it under the treasure trove law.”
He looks at me. “Let me guess. Bodie recommended his lawyer to you too.”
I laugh. “You’re starting to catch on.”
West leans back and stretches an arm along the railing. His hand is close enough that I could touch it if I scooted over a few inches. “Do you even realize what Bodie is?”
“Of course,” I shoot back. “He’s a broker and an art dealer. Someone like that has great connections.”
West rubs a hand over his face. “You really are something. Did he tell you how he met me?”
I hook my thumbs on the inside of the life jacket so I can rest my arms more comfortably. “No…not really. He said he’s worked with you in the past.”
“He sure has. He worked with my partner—and on occasion me—as our criminal informant.”
I wait for him to crack and start laughing at his joke—except, he doesn’t.
“Wait, he was a criminal informant? Doesn’t that mean he would have had to commit a crime of some sort?”
“Or something like that,” West says sarcastically. “I tell you what: if you ever get into a hint of legal trouble, hire Bodie’s lawyer. That man can move mountains. Fletcher and I worked on an undercover operation to bust Bodie for theft, possession of stolen goods, larceny, forgery, and a whole grocery list of other things. After he was arrested, he worked a deal so that he didn’t spend a day in jail.”
“Wait.” I shake my head as I process this information. “So, you’re saying that Bodie really is a criminal?”
“What kind of translation work did he have you do?”
“He needed help making a deal to buy some chess pieces,” I explain. It’s not like he asked me to hide a body for him, so I don’t think there’s any reason to hide the information.
West jerks his chin. “That’s good. If you work with him again in the future, make sure you get everything in writing.” He waves an arm through the air. “I did a lot of work for him with that same chess set, and instead of paying me in cash, he gave me a dilapidated sailboat.”
Waggling my eyebrows up and down, I ask him, “So you’re in need of some cash, right? Because I can help you remedy that.”